1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an ink-jet printing apparatus. More specifically, the invention relates to a textile printing apparatus for performing printing by ejecting an ink toward a fabric, such as cloth or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various means have been proposed and practiced by ink-jet printing systems performing printing with liquid ink.
Among generally known printing systems, an ink-jet printing method is a non-impact printing system which generates little noise and has various advantages such as capability of high speed printing, capability of printing on a plain paper without requiring a special fixing process, and has achieved significant evolution in recent years. Above all, accompanied by significant development of information processing technology in recent years, an apparatus employing the ink-jet printing system has been widely available as output devices for computer, facsimile, wordprocessor and the like.
In order to make the advantages of the ink-jet printing system useful, in addition to printing for plain paper as conventionally used, there has been proposed an application for printing on various printing media other than the plain paper, for example, development in textile printing for cloth is attracting attention.
The ink-jet textile printing system has advantages which does not require a complicated process, such as preparation of a screen printing plate, indexing of the plate or the like, as required in a conventional screen textile printing system, and is easy in handling the production of an image to be printed or correction of the image, or the like.
On the other hand, a composite textile printing system utilizing both the ink-jet textile printing system and the screen textile printing system for utilizing the advantages of the ink-jet textile printing system set forth above and advantages of the screen textile printing system, is one possible system to be considered. More specifically, by using the screen textile printing system, in comparison with the ink-jet textile printing system, color of a portion in the image to be printed, such as background portion, can be printed uniformly. Also, the screen textile printing system can print an image with lesser granulation even in an image portion having a lower density spatial frequency, that is, smaller density variation. Furthermore, the screen textile printing system can easily realize high density printing of background color and the like.
A composite textile printing system appropriately utilizing the advantages of the ink-jet textile printing system and the screen textile printing system is considered to be an effective textile printing system. The foregoing advantages of the screen printing system are particularly important for the case where the printed cloth or the like becomes merchandise having high additional value, such as clothes or the like. However, while the screen textile printing system achieved various advantages as set forth above, it basically requires various complicated process steps as set forth above. It is quite desirable to neglect such process steps in the textile printing.